Today’s reader I’m going to keep anonymous, and his query is this: “I write this email because I’ve been facing a problem in the past few months. I started DJing back in Brazil in a big city, but in a small scene of bass music fans, DJs and parties. Last year, I moved to Canada and I’m surrounded by a much bigger scene, but so far I haven’t managed to get into it.
“I’m pretty confident about my DJing abilities and I even started DJing in some good events back in Brazil but, as I don’t know many people in my new city and don’t know the details of the bass music scene here, I have a big disadvantage.”
“So I just want to know how I could face this challenge of being new in the city, getting used this huge differences from the scenes I was part of and start again playing in some underground events. It’s so new and different that sometimes I have no idea what to begin with.”
Digital DJ Tips says:
I feel your pain, having moved from my home city (Manchester, England) where I had been Djing and promoting for over 10 years, to a whole new country some eight years ago and trying to “re-establish” myself (in all kinds of ways, not just DJing). For me, just taking the time to hang out before trying to get gigs etc worked; it actually took me two years of hanging out at this certain place I wanted to play at, and a year of dropping hints, before I finally got booked.
Rather than reel off the usual advice I give people, which to do it justice would take a whole series of articles, what I’d like to do in this instance is ask our readers for specific tips. Maybe we have some Canadian readers who can offer Canada-centric advice? Maybe we have other reader who’ve made the country switch recently and have some fresh words of wisdom that are bang up to date about how to do this? That’s the beauty of having such a large readership here – I reckon there is someone or even a few people out there who’ve done this really recently and who can share a few tips with you. Fingers crossed!
So, over to you: Have you moved country recently and tried – and managed – to break into the scene in your new country / city? How did you do it? Please share your stories below…
Phil Morse
